HELP - Is this my soundcard being a POS?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Steven C \(Doktersteve\)
  • Start date Start date
Hello All,

I dont normally post to newsgroups but this info I felt I had to share
as I now the pain of this sound blaster BS.....I dont mean to be long
winded by feel I should state all I have tried.

I too was in the same boat as all you guys with a bass distorting,
crackling sound blaster 5.1 during heavy system use.

Specifically, I found the static during gameplay in busy scenes and
playing mp3's during ide disk activity....Anything that had to do with
sounds and high system resource demands resulted in
static\crackling.....

I have done all suggested by numerous sources and have managed to
improve the situation but not eliminate it.

Below is the dance I have been through thus far and still no joy....
(Please note I did image my OS install prior to any driver installs so
that I could try different driver versions on a clean system...)

-changed sound card hardware from sb live value to full 5.1
-sound card is in 3rd slot after agp
-sound card irq is not shared and on 5
-latency patch applied
-different creative driver versions installed with dx8b to dx9
-directx acceleration adjusted

After all of this I still had static. I restored my pre-driver OS
image with win xp sp1, hotfixes and installed dx 9. I then installed
the KX sound driver set. I tested every game, every application and
scenario, and NO MORE STATIC\DISTORTION!!!!!! If you have creative
live drivers installed, get rid of them and try these.
http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/index.php?skip=1

It would appear as though creative drivers hog far too much pci bus
bandwith and because of this the via chipset cannot provide the
requested bus access during heavy system use.. Thus the noise and or
no sound for some during heavy system use.

Apparently this has been going on for a very long time. I wish
hardware reviewers would have stated these ongoing known issues with
via boards. I would not have bought one. But just like everyone here
Im stuck...So thus I felt I needed to share both my frustrations and
the fix.....

Let me know how it worked out for you guys and please pass along the
suggestion to try KX sound drivers......

Quick Specs:
Windows XP sp1 + way too many security hot fixes
DX9
pci latency patch
latest bios and via 4-1 drivers
AMD athlon xp 2100+ (1.7ghz)
1gb crucial ram ecc & reg'd
Sound Blaster 5.1
abit kr7a-raid kt266a via chipset
smc nic
adaptec 2940 scsi controller
2 x 40gb in raid 1
2 x 20gb on std ide ports
1 x ide burner
1 x scsi plextor cdrom
enermax 450 watt power supply
 
(e-mail address removed) (Gunif) wrote in @posting.google.com:
After all of this I still had static. I restored my pre-driver OS
image with win xp sp1, hotfixes and installed dx 9. I then installed
the KX sound driver set. I tested every game, every application and
scenario, and NO MORE STATIC\DISTORTION!!!!!! If you have creative
live drivers installed, get rid of them and try these.
http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/index.php?skip=1
Click to expand...

Are you able to use the EAX effects after installing these drivers? I use
the Audigy for voice overs during Hallowe'en and need to be able to still
run the EAX part of things.

Thanks,
Skeksis
 
I've not really played around with EAX that much even while I had the
creative drivers installed. I did however observe many many options
in the KX driver set that dealt with effects. My priority was to
eliminate the static and crackling which was accomplished.

Regards and Best of luck
 
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